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For the past six months or so I've been experimenting with a newer social networking tool called "twitter". it is essentially a free, web based tool that allows users to create a network of friends and communicate via SMS (mobile phone text messages) from phone to phone. Many people use the site to simply let others know what they are doing (e.g. eating at a restaurant, waiting for the bus, going to a friend's house). But the more I use twitter, the more it seems to be a perfect fit for connecting activists because it's free, anonymous, and effective (you can notify hundreds of contacts simultaneously with one SMS message). It's also web-based, so users can send messages using a computer if a mobile phone is unavailable.

With this thought in mind, I did some web research to see if anyone has used twitter for this purpose. The only good example I could find was a recent blog post on "Vancouver Social Enterprise Forum", in which the author describes how an Egyptian activist has successfully used twitter to keep colleagues apprised of his whereabouts.

Excerpt:

The example was given of Egyptian activist Alaa Abd El Fattah,
who has been detained many times and who uses Twitter to constantly let
people know where he is, as a form of personal protection through
publicity - if he stops twittering, his friends know that something is
wrong.

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